Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Humans suppress areas of the brain used for analytical thinking and engage the parts responsible for empathy in order to believe in god, research suggests.

They do the opposite when thinking about the physical world, according to the study.

"When there's a question of faith, from the analytic point of view, it may seem absurd," said Professor Tony Jack, who led the research.

"But, from what we understand about the brain, the leap of faith to belief in the supernatural amounts to pushing aside the critical/analytical way of thinking to help us achieve greater social and emotional insight."

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Most British people think religion causes more harm than good according to a survey commissioned by the Huffington Post. Surprisingly, even among those who describe themselves as “very religious” 20 percent say that religion is harmful to society. For that we can probably thank the internet, which broadcasts everything from Isis beheadings, to stories about Catholic hospitals denying care to miscarrying women, to lists ofwild and weird religious beliefs, to articles about psychological harms from Bible-believing Christianity.

In 2010, sociologist Phil Zuckerman published Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment. Zuckerman lined up evidence that the least religious societies also tend to be the most peaceful, prosperous and equitable, with public policies that help people to flourish while decreasing both desperation and economic gluttony.

We can debate whether prosperity and peace lead people to be less religious or vice versa. Indeed evidence supports the view that religion thrives on existential anxiety. But even if this is the case, there’s good reason to suspect that the connection between religion and malfunctioning societies goes both ways. Here are six ways religions make peaceful prosperity harder to achieve.

1. Religion promotes tribalism. Infidel, heathen, heretic. Religion divides insiders from outsiders. Rather than assuming good intentions, adherents often are taught to treat outsiders with suspicion. “Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers,” says the Christian Bible. “They wish that you disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them,” says the Koran (Sura 4:91).

At best, teachings like these discourage or even forbid the kinds of friendship and intermarriage that help clans and tribes become part of a larger whole. At worst, outsiders are seen as enemies of God and goodness, potential agents of Satan, lacking in morality and not to be trusted. Believers might huddle together, anticipating martyrdom. When simmering tensions erupt, societies fracture along sectarian fault lines.

Sacred texts including the Bible, Torah and Koran all preserve and protect fragments of Iron Age culture, putting a god’s name and endorsement on some of the very worst human impulses. Any believer looking to excuse his own temper, sense of superiority, warmongering, bigotry, or planetary destruction can find validation in writings that claim to be authored by God.

Today, humanity’s moral consciousness is evolving, grounded in an ever deeper and broader understanding of the Golden Rule. But many conservative believers can’t move forward. They are anchored to the Iron Age. This pits them against change in a never-ending battle that consumes public energy and slows creative problem solving.

3. Religion makes a virtue out of faith. Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus. So sing children in Sunday schools across America. The Lord works in mysterious ways, pastors tell believers who have been shaken by horrors like brain cancer or a tsunami. Faith is a virtue.

As science eats away at territory once held by religion, traditional religious beliefs require greater and greater mental defenses against threatening information. To stay strong, religion trains believers to practice self-deception, shut out contradictory evidence, and trust authorities rather than their own capacity to think. This approach seeps into other parts of life. Government, in particular, becomes a fight between competing ideologies rather than a quest to figure out practical, evidence-based solutions that promote wellbeing.

4. Religion diverts generous impulses and good intentions. Feeling sad about Haiti? Give to our mega-church.Crass financial appeals during times of crisis thankfully are not the norm, but religion does routinely redirect generosity in order to perpetuate religion itself. Generous people are encouraged to give till it hurts to promote the church itself rather than the general welfare. Each year, thousands of missionaries throw themselves into the hard work of saving souls rather than saving lives or saving our planetary life support system. Their work, tax free, gobbles up financial and human capital.

5. Religion teaches helplessness.Que sera, sera—what will be will be. Let go and let God.We’ve all heard these phrases, but sometimes we don’t recognize the deep relationship between religiosity and resignation. In the most conservative sects of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, women are seen as more virtuous if they let God manage their family planning. Droughts, poverty and cancer get attributed to the will of God rather than bad decisions or bad systems; believers wait for God to solve problems they could solve themselves.

This attitude harms society at large as well as individuals. When today’s largest religions came into existence, ordinary people had little power to change social structures either through technological innovation or advocacy. Living well and doing good were largely personal matters. When this mentality persists, religion inspires personal piety without social responsibility. Structural problems can be ignored as long as the believer is kind to friends and family and generous to the tribal community of believers.

6. Religions seek power. Think corporate personhood. Religions are man-made institutions, just like for-profit corporations are. And like any corporation, to survive and grow a religion must find a way to build power and wealth and compete for market share. Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity—any large enduring religious institution is as expert at this as Coca-cola or Chevron. And just like for-profit behemoths, they are willing to wield their power and wealth in the service of self-perpetuation, even it harms society at large.

In fact, unbeknown to religious practitioners, harming society may actually be part of religion’s survival strategy. In the words of sociologist Phil Zuckerman and researcher Gregory Paul, “Not a single advanced democracy that enjoys benign, progressive socio-economic conditions retains a high level of popular religiosity.” When people feel prosperous and secure the hold of religion weakens.

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Several people have asked me why I left the Mormon church. A few years ago, I put together an outline of the issues I had with Mormonism. I called the outline "Disconfirmations of Mormonism," and used it as a framework to add new details as I discovered them. Today, the outline is over 300 pages. To help others who might be on a similar journey, I decided to put it online at

Friday, May 30, 2014

Two Oklahoma parents are in custody after they allegedly kept their 6-year-old child locked in an empty room where he was tortured, police said.

Edward Everett, 28, and 32-year-old Krystal Everett were arrested last Thursday in Canadian County, Oklahoma, after police received a phone call saying the couple's small boy was being abused and neglected in the home, according to Fox 25.

When authorities arrived at the residence, they said they found the boy sitting in a fetal position inside a bare room. He wore only underpants and had bruises covering his forehead and eyes. The boy also had burns and sores all over his body.

"This is one of the worst cases of child abuse and neglect I've ever seen, and it will serve to reinforce my commitment to protecting the children of Canadian County," Sheriff Randall Edwards said in a news release.

The anonymous student stated that, when she attempted to simply sit during the Pledge, her high school teacher instructed her to stand. She was also told by the teacher in front of her classmates that not standing for the Pledge “is disrespectful to America and to military personnel.”

“Forcing students to participate in the Pledge against their will is an infringement on their constitutional rights,” said American Humanist Association executive director, Roy Speckhardt. “By singling out students who do not wish to participate, the school is discriminating against children who are good without a god.”

“Federal courts have consistently upheld the right of students to sit out the Pledge of Allegiance as a matter of free speech and freedom of conscience,” said David Niose, legal director of the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center. “Since the Pledge exercise defines patriotism in terms of God-belief, it’s perfectly understandable that many good, patriotic atheist children and families would want to exercise their right to opt out.”

A new Pew Research analysis finds that as of 2012, nearly a quarter of the world’s countries and territories (22%) had anti-blasphemy laws or policies, and one-in-ten (11%) had laws or policies penalizing apostasy. The legal punishments for such transgressions vary from fines to death.

We found that laws restricting apostasy and blasphemy are most common in the Middle East and North Africa, where 14 of the 20 countries (70%) criminalize blasphemy and 12 of the 20 countries (60%) criminalize apostasy. While apostasy laws exist in only two other regions of the world – Asia-Pacific and sub-Saharan Africa – blasphemy laws can be found in all regions, including Europe (in 16% of countries) and the Americas (31%).

We counted and categorized reports of the presence of these laws in 2012 as part of an extension of our research on restrictions on religion around the world. Nearly three-in-ten countries in the world (29%) had a high or very high level of government restrictions in 2012 – these countries include about 64% of the world’s population, according to our report.

The Pew Research Center recently asked voters whether certain characteristics would make it more or less likely that a politician would get their votes. For example, if the candidate were a woman, 19% of those surveyed said they would be more inclined to vote for her while 9% said less, for a net positive of 10%.

So Pew ranked the characteristics from highest net positive traits (served in the military, was/is a governor) to the highest net negative (take a guess):

There we are, way at the bottom. 48% of voters, on the whole, say they would be less likely to vote for someone who was an atheist. Having an affair would hurt you lessthan admitting there’s no evidence for the existence of God. Someone who’s never held elected office would be at an advantage over someone who didn’t believe in fairy tales.

The new Cosmos series is amazing. The real reason conservatives are freaking out about Neil deGrasse Tyson: He's laying bare their worst hypocrisies.

From Salon:The religious right has been freaking outabout Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos” for what feels like an eternity. And, while the theological complaints seem laughable for their rancor and predictability, it’s time we thought harder about what they represent, because the Christian right’s “Cosmos” agita actually indicates a far deeper problem in religious conservatism — the selective acceptance ofEnlightenment values. Religious conservatives have selectively adopted the legacy of liberal Enlightenment, from free speech to science, and jettisoned it when it does not suit their narrow ideological aims.There is a nasty tendency for those arguing for their case to adopt a stance of enlightened empiricism on one issue to devolve into empirical nihilism on another. There is also the habit of shifting from a high praise of liberal values on one issue to utter contempt on another. Of course, our various liberal values will come into conflict frequently and must be weighed, but we must be disturbed at how quickly some, particularly on the religious right, are willing to twist these traditions for their own gain.

The odd conflict of science and religion has come to define modern religious fundamentalism. While most religious people happily accept scientific theories about gravity, claims about the age of Earth are subject to a strange scrutiny by those who believe that the literary creation narratives in the Bible describe actual events.

The scientific consensus about global warming must be untrue, because, as Dr. Innes writes in“Left, Right and Christ,” the world is “not a glass ornament that we might accidentally destroy … we are not capable of destroying it, whether by nuclear weapons or carbon emissions.” Young earth creationism is the ultimate attempt to both accept modern science, but also to deny it. Fundamentalists like Ken Ham argue that the world and laws we currently observe simply bear no resemblance to the past.

In truth, we cannot get fundamentalism without the scientific revolution. Fundamentalism does not exist independently, but rather defines itself in relationship to post-Enlightenment values. It is the odd melding of science and religion that creates fundamentalism — the belief that the Bible is ultimately both a scientific and religious text. Fundamentalists, like the conspiracy theorists they resemble, will build up reams of evidence creating the case for something that can be disproven with a simple logical proposition. Few thinkers have built such an impressive edifice of logic and evidence upon such a thin foundation of speculation.

Dinesh D’Souza, for instance, has taken to using science as proof of religion — he argues, rather absurdly, that the Bible’s explanation of the origins of the universe predates modern science. In his speech at Intelligence Squared, he claims:

When the discovery of the big bang came — this, by the way, was at a time when most scientists believed the universe was eternal, the steady state universe was the prevailing doctrine of American and Western science — so it came as a shock that the universe had a beginning. Why? because, in a way, it wasn’t just that matter had a beginning, but space and time also had a beginning. In other words, this was something that the ancient Hebrews had said thousands of years ago and without conducting a single scientific experiment. By the way, this is not the same as other cosmologies. Other ancient cosmologies posited the universe being fashioned by a kind of carpenter god who made it out of some preexisting stuff, but the ancient Hebrews said, “No, first there was nothing, and then there was a universe.”

I know, he’s just a Tea Party candidate with almost no chance of election, but Greg Brannon, primary candidate for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Kay Hagen, said in a debate the other night that God controls the climate.

And here all this time you’ve thought it was physics.

Welcome back to North Carolina (Motto: “We have mines of crazy so rich we’ll NEVER run out!”). The state has made most of its science news this spring with its staggering inaction on the Duke Energy coal ash spill. You remember: the largest energy company in the country spilled 39,000 tons of toxic ash into the Dan River from coal ash pits it had for years resisted cleaning up. Then it waited two months to do much about it. Then state government, naturally, sided with Duke in appealing a judge’s ruling that Duke should, you know, clean up its mess. The fact that the state of North Carolina thinks that the nation’s largest electric utility should not exercise the degree of responsibility we require from a kindergartener has, of course, nothing to do with the fact that NC governor Pat McCrory worked for Duke Energy for 28 years or that Duke has donated $1.1 million to McCrory and the organizations that support him. I mean come on.

Apparently vibrators kill more people than guns – at least in Sandy Springs, Ga. You can carry a gun without a prescription, or even a criminal check. But in order to purchase a sex toy, a woman needs her doctor’s permission. No kidding!

Under a local ordinance, any woman seeking a marital aide has to go to the trouble of making an appointment with her physician, paying for the visit and providing the doc with a valid medical reason for needing a sex toy. Then if the physician deems her medically wanting and feels like giving her a prescription, she can go to the toy store.

Sandy Springs’ local politicians, such as former chair of the Georgia Republican Party member of the Republican National Committee Rusty Paul, fresh from campaigning on ‘small government’ promises, put on their puritanical boots and stomped all over women’s rights by banning the sale of sex toys without a, “medical, scientific, educational, legislative or law enforcement,” purpose. One wonders what a valid “legislative” purpose is – pleasure devices at City Council meetings, perhaps? And whatever is a valid “law enforcement” purpose?

Melissa Davenport, a Sandy Springs resident suffering from multiple sclerosis, says that these items permit her and her husband to still be intimate and credits sex devices with saving her marriage. But her doctor refuses to give her a prescription.

So Davenport filed a lawsuit this week seeking to overturn the city ordinance. She feels that local government has no business in the bedroom.

(Some people) have this dirty mind about how people are going to use it. People really do need devices because they need it for health reasons and to have a healthy intimate life with their spouse.

Gerry Weber, Davenport’s attorney, says:

The (city) ordinance basically says the government can stick its nose in your bedroom and say you can use this but not that.

She plans on using the Fourteenth Amendment violation to argue Davenport’s case. This amendment guarantees a right to privacy. The attorney says:

People have the right to decide for themselves whether these devices help their intimate life, and the government has no business being the bedroom and second guessing that decision.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

More crazy news from Saudi Arabia. Are they ever going to get their heads out of their collective asses?

Saudi Arabia has introduced a series of new laws which define atheists as terrorists, according to a report from Human Rights Watch.

In a string of royal decrees and an overarching new piece of legislation to deal with terrorism generally, the Saudi King Abdullah has clamped down on all forms of political dissent and protests that could "harm public order".

The new laws have largely been brought in to combat the growing number of Saudis travelling to take part in the civil war in Syria, who have previously returned with newfound training and ideas about overthrowing the monarchy.

To that end, King Abdullah issued Royal Decree 44, which criminalises "participating in hostilities outside the kingdom" with prison sentences of between three and 20 years, Human Rights Watch said.

Yet last month further regulations were issued by the Saudi interior ministry, identifying a broad list of groups which the government considers to be terrorist organisations - including the Muslim Brotherhood.

Article one of the new provisions defines terrorism as "calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based".Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch, said: "Saudi authorities have never tolerated criticism of their policies, but these recent laws and regulations turn almost any critical expression or independent association into crimes of terrorism.

"These regulations dash any hope that King Abdullah intends to open a space for peaceful dissent or independent groups," Mr Stork said.

Human Rights Watch said the new regulations were also a setback to campaigns for the protection and release of a number of prominent human rights activists currently jailed in Saudi Arabia. It said Waleed Abu al-Khair and Mikhlif al-Shammari recently lost appeals and will soon begin three-month and five-year respective sentences for criticizing Saudi authorities.The organisation said the new "terrorism" provisions contain language that prosecutors and judges are already using to prosecute and convict independent activists and peaceful dissidents.

I love to sit on my back porch in Florida and listen to the rumbling of thunder. It reminds me of God’s majesty and power.

Yeah… thunder. Which, scientifically speaking, is the sound made whenever God goes bowling. Thunderstorms have nothing to do with God. I know this because I did what Grady didn’t: I looked it up.

3) Flowers

There are more than 400,000 species of flowers in the world, and most of them are not edible. Their job is to simply make the world beautiful. Did they just haphazardly evolve over time, or did a loving God create each individual shape and color scheme for our enjoyment?

Entire books have been written about how and why flowers evolved as they did. Needless to say, making the world beautiful is a pleasant byproduct but not the main purpose of how flowers came to be. This is just another example of willful ignorance on Grady’s part. He could learn about this stuff, but he chooses not to because making up stories is much more entertaining — and doesn’t conflict with his faith.

4) The Bible

There is nothing like the Bible because it carries the same consistent message throughout all of its 66 different books.

If a Muslim had written a similar list and used “The Koran” as justification, Grady would immediately dismiss it. And that’s why we should dismiss Grady’s special book here, too. The Bible doesn’t prove God exists any more than the Harry Potter series proves that Voldemort exists.

5) The global spread of Christianity

Our faith is spreading because it is the truth — and history shows that when this truth is mocked and scorned, it actually spreads faster!

I’m sure Constantine and the Crusades and wealth and power had nothing to do with the spread of Christianity at all… Grady is falling prey to the simple and false idea that if a lot of people believe something, it must be true. Which is really the worst reason to believe in anything. By that logic, Jay Leno was the funniest late night talk show host ever.

6) Jesus

The most amazing thing about God is not that He exists, but that He loved us so much He was willing to send His Son to earth to save us from ourselves.

Yep, the proof of God is that he gave birth to a child* and then tortured him to teach us a lesson.

*Citation needed.

7) My personal friendship with God.

… the best evidence is how He forgave me, changed me and put unexplainable joy in my heart. And I can prove that.

Look, I’m glad Grady has a friend. If he didn’t, it’s possible he’d be even more insufferable. But the idea that he feels something will never convince anyone else that God is a real, tangible being. Once again, if a non-Christian ever gave this reason as to why Grady should believe in their higher power instead, he wouldn’t consider it for a second. And yet he thinks it’s solid proof of his God’s existence.

…

If this is the best “proof” Christians can offer — and it really is since the evidence just isn’t there — all it shows is that they got nothing. It’s not just unconvincing; it’s an embarrassment, a snapshot of how much apologists have to stretch the truth to fit into their pre-conceived narrative.